


The Ethical Implications of the Events in The Evil Gene

by GammaSpectrum



Category: The Evil Gene (2015)
Genre: Character Analysis, Dubious Ethics, Ethics, Gen, Meta, medical ethics, medical research, movie analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 16:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19299064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GammaSpectrum/pseuds/GammaSpectrum
Summary: Originally for a college course assignment, this essay (or meta) looks at the ethical implications of the situations found in The Evil Gene, with a particular focus on the ethics of the research being conducted by Dr. Ehrhart as it pertains to the philosophy of ethics surrounding health care and medical research.





	The Ethical Implications of the Events in The Evil Gene

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WarlockWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarlockWriter/gifts).



> This work was originally an essay I submitted for a class on healthcare ethics, a 200-level class aimed at future healthcare workers, typically nursing students.
> 
> I've lightly edited it for clarity.
> 
> For context:
> 
> Part I - A summary of the film, which was required to be approximately one page in length, to explain it to someone who had not seen it, and make the rest of the essay comprehensible.
> 
> Part II - This section was meant to identify the ethical principles involved in the film and in what way they were involved.
> 
> Part III - The prompt was "Discuss how the film represents the health care issue. Is it a good representation or is it a bad representation? What was left out? What should be changed? What is the goal of this film? How did it make you feel watching it?" (Given how much ground this prompt covered, please excuse any choppiness in this section.)
> 
> Part IV - My review of the film. This section contains what I thought of the film (from a non-fannish perspective) and why I thought it.

**Part I**

_The Evil Gene_ sets itself up on the surface to be a murder mystery and psychological horror film in a world in which science has discovered a gene mutation (HSS-282, colloquially called the “evil gene”) that supposedly predicts the violent, homicidal mental breakdown of all its carriers. The protagonist is an FBI agent named Griff Krenshaw who has been assigned to what should be an open-and-shut internal investigation involving the suicide of a research scientist at a secure and top-secret facility. Godfrey Correctional Facility is being used to house death-row inmates who were given a reprieve in order to participate in the study of HSS-282 and potential treatments or cures for it. The lead researcher Dr. Mobley appears to have committed suicide and everyone at the facility believes he simply went crazy under the stress of dealing with the “evil” inmates and killed himself, yet as Agent Krenshaw tries to construct an airtight case, he struggles to make sense of Dr. Mobley’s rambling notes and to determine how he snuck a gun into such a heavily restricted area, or why the gun does not have his fingerprints on it.

Meanwhile, Dr. Dana Ehrhart has taken over the research project. Unlike Dr. Mobley, who seemed to have come to the conclusion that the afflicted prisoners were, due to their genetics, inherently evil and irredeemable, she firmly believes that the fates of individuals with the “evil gene” are more malleable than commonly believed by the scientific community and that an effective treatment can be found. Eventually we discover that it is likely that she killed Dr. Mobley (its inconclusive whether or not he went insane, or if she planted evidence to make it appear that way) in order to ensure that he did not stop the research and recommend that HSS-282 be tested for in the general population and individuals with it be quarantined for the rest of their lives, as the government had apparently been quietly considering. She’s motivated by the knowledge that her late husband had the gene (and committed suicide because of it) and that her daughter is already begun showing early symptoms of it.

In order to keep Agent Krenshaw from ruling the death a murder and discovering her role in it, she sabotages his investigation by replacing his medications with placebos. As it turns out, Agent Krenshaw also has the gene but had been managing the hallucinations with several prescription antidepressants, likely prescribed to deal with his probable PTSD. Without his medication and surrounded by an extremely triggering environment, Agent Krenshaw eventually hallucinates so badly that he murders a guard and accidentally sets the prisoners free, before attempting suicide. It’s revealed that due to his breakdown, Dr. Ehrhart’s crime does not come to light and she’s permitted to continue studying the gene, at a different facility (Godfrey being shut down as a result of all the inmates being killed during Krenshaw’s psychotic break near the end of the film) with Agent Krenshaw as one of her new subjects.

**Part II**

_The Evil Gene_ contains situations that involve numerous ethical principles. To begin with, the setting for the majority of the film is a decommissioned prison that is housing a top-secret research project involving research done on death row prisoners. Of course, any research done on prisoners brings up issues of autonomy, consent and the Nuremburg Code. Prisoners, by definition, have restricted autonomy. They are confined to a single facility with strict rules about what they can and cannot do, and are told by the prison when, where and what they may eat, when they sleep, when they may have recreational time, and so on. The psychological pressures of this type of imprisonment makes being involved in research a relatively desirable thing by contrast, and consequently any consent given by a prisoner must be considered suspect on the basis that the many perks of being a research subject may be considered coercion. In _The Evil Gene_ the level of coercion is considerably worse than in any case study that was discussed within the textbook for this class1. The prisoners were death row inmates given a special reprieve in order to participate in a research project that has the goal of “curing” them. With the alternative to becoming a research subject being certain death, it’s difficult to imagine that consent could be considered truly freely given. Since this so clearly violates the Nuremburg Code, it is not surprising that the film openly refers to this project as being top-secret. On the surface this could be thought to be because the government does not want to panic people about it preserving the lives of inmates that the general population clearly fears, but it may also serve to avoid the attention of individuals who may object to the manner in which they obtained research subjects.

A lesser violation of consent occurs in the latter half of the film, when Dr. Ehrhart obtains some of Agent Krenshaw’s blood in order to test it for the gene without his knowledge. It is implied that she drugged him in order to obtain the blood sample that she would later test, all of which was done without his knowledge let alone with his consent.

The film does touch on beneficence, non-maleficence and least harm. Although it’s never explicitly stated, much of the film not focused on the murder mystery or the horror aspects of Krenshaw’s hallucinations, deals with the issue of what to do about the knowledge of individuals with a predisposition to extreme violence and the ability to identify them before they harm others. The film poses but does not answer the question of what is the most beneficent and non-maleficent thing to do? Is it beneficent and non-maleficent to identify these individuals and remove them from society before they can harm themselves or others? Or is the privacy and autonomy of individuals who have not yet done anything harmful important enough that violating those rights would make such interventions actively harmful to the individuals that are identified? It may better be considered a case of least harm and utility. No matter which choice they make, someone will be harmed in some manner. If they identify and quarantine individuals with the gene (by violating everyone’s privacy and forcing the blood test on the entire population), they may prevent numerous tragedies, including some serial killers, mass shooters, and similar violent crimes at the cost of imprisoning a relatively small number of currently innocent gene carriers. On the other hand, if the government chooses to prioritize the right to privacy and considers imprisoning carriers a violation of fifth amendment or unlawful detention, then it will have, by inaction, allowed innocent people to die when some or all of these individuals become violent in the future. At times, the film seems to pose the question of whether “the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few”2 , and if so, whether (by utility) the harm done to some individuals (carriers) can be justified by the good done for (the protection of) the rest of the population.

Although we don’t find out what the government eventually chooses to do (however it’s strongly suggested that the government plans to test for the gene and quarantine carriers), whichever choice it does make will likely be an instance of finality, either by deciding that the right to privacy and personal freedom is more important than the potential lives lost to future psychological breakdowns, or by deciding the protection of life outweighs any concerns about violation of privacy and unlawful detention.

Dr. Ehrhart also violates Krenshaw’s confidentiality by disclosing the results of his blood test without his consent. Although this breach was made by her in order to sabotage his investigation and cast doubt on any legitimate findings he may have made during the course of it. Likewise, her actions show a distinct lack of respect for persons. Both the prisoners and Krenshaw are only a means to end for her. She wishes to use them to find a cure or treatment for her daughter, so that she doesn’t lose her like she lost her husband. Their wellbeing is not a concern for her, or is only a concern insomuch as it impacts the integrity of the research. This also strongly indicates that she is not at any point impartial about the research. She has clear conflicts of interest that she is trying to obscure throughout the film. Her husband was implied to be patient alpha, one of the early research subjects, and the development of a treatment or cure is important to keeping her daughter safe and free. (Indeed, when asked by Krenshaw to speak with patient alpha or his wife, Dr. Ehrhart outright lies – a violation of veracity – and claims that patient confidentially prevents her from identifying either individual, even though it would be within in her rights to reveal that she was the wife and patient alpha was her deceased husband.)

 

1 The textbook being used for the class I took was the 9th edition of _Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Bioethics_ by Ronald Munson, published in 2012.

2 Yes, I am paraphrasing the famous quote from Star Trek. I am a fan and this has been how I’ve remembered utility all semester. 

**Part III**

In light of what we’ve learned about government research in the past, including the Tuskegee syphilis study, the Guatemalan syphilis experiment, the various radiation tests performed on uninformed human subjects, and the Willowbrook experiment, the research being performed under secret conditions (either to prevent protest of the subject matter or protest of the poor ethical design) in _The Evil Gene_ is not entirely without precedent in the real world. Obviously, it is not necessarily intended to be used for discussion of research ethics, as the primary focus of the film is on whether or not Dr. Mobley committed suicide or was murdered and then on who was responsible for the murder, and then with a secondary focus on the psychological state of the protagonist and the mystery of whether what he’s seeing is real or hallucinatory. Since this is the case, it should not be surprisingly that the fact that the woman who became head of research through the murder of her former boss did not adhere to best practices when it came to ethical behavior, especially while running a research project that was already ignoring some ethical considerations.

Additionally, the science presented in _The Evil Gene_ does not reflect any current understanding of how genetics influence mental health, aggression, or violence. It’s not without scientific precedent to find genes that are associated with mental health conditions, but the association is never complete. To the best of my knowledge, there has yet to be a gene discovered that predicts with anything approaching one hundred percent certainty the development of any mental condition. There are genes that predict a higher likelihood of developing certain conditions but being a carrier for those gene mutations does not guarantee the development of the associated disease. So, in that sense, _The Evil Gene_ oversimplifies the science of genetics and overestimates the predictive power of genetic testing, largely for dramatic effect. Likewise, although a careful viewer can piece together a fair bit about the research and how its being conducted, that is never the focus of the film, and so the finer points of how medical research is conducted is glossed over by the film.

Thematically, _The Evil Gene_ appears to be an exploration of nature versus nurture. Given the existence of a gene that could predict extreme violence with any degree certainty (or any gene that could predict any form of behavior patterns with any certainty), the film appears to ask the question of whether or not we are truly the ones in control of ourselves and our fates, or are our fates so strongly influenced by the genetic code within our cells that it should call into question whether or not we have free will. If, as in the film, genes could code for violent actions, are we truly at fault for the way our brains misfire to cause those acts? Can we overcome the limitations placed on us by our genes and retain our free will? And how should we treat individuals who are not neurotypical through no fault of their own? None of these questions are explicitly answered by the film, although in the case of the last one, it’s at least implied that dehumanizing people with the “evil gene” is wrong and can only exacerbate the problems associated with it.

Since the film does not give the viewers any definitive answers and strongly indicates that the POV character, Griff Krenshaw, is an unreliable narrator due to his slow descent into increasingly severe hallucinations, the film leaves me feeling mildly unsettled. 

**Part IV**

_The Evil Gene_ is not a great film. At times, it felt like the filmmakers couldn’t quite decide on what theme they truly wished to focus on, as it brushes on genetic predestination versus environmental factors, research ethics, a murder mystery, supernatural horror, and Christian religious apocalyptic themes. Given the nature of this class, I chose to focus on only the one or two aspects that fit with healthcare ethics. That said, it is not a bad film either. It’s entertaining and it does present some truly difficult questions, which I believe it does a service by not attempting to wrap things up in a neat bow with clear answers, but instead leaving the question of what truly happened up to the viewer.

The film does a good job of making Griff Krenshaw a likable protagonist and, at least in my opinion, I couldn’t help but want to hope for a good outcome for him. At the times, it appears that Krenshaw may not be inevitably doomed to go insane in the manner that he eventually does. Prior to Dr. Dana Ehrhart’s meddling with his medications and the introduction of an extremely triggering environment, Krenshaw appeared to be functioning very well, and perhaps may have continued to do so for a very long time if not for the events of the film. On the other hand, the fact that even the protagonist was not exempt from the effects of being a carrier of the gene, lends credence to a potential reading of the film that suggests that our genes do heavily influence our fate.

In regards to what I think about the nature of free will in respect to how our genetics influence our behavior, I personally like to believe in free will. At the same time, I recognize that you cannot beat genetics completely. It has a profound effect on one’s life. Although we like to imagine that we have control over our own minds, our minds and our consciousness is a function of a physical organ that is strongly influenced by our genetic make-up. I can no more will my brain to overcome its genetic structure than I can do so for my intestines and immune system. If I could, I wouldn’t have spent three years nearly dying of blood loss and malnutrition brought on by my immune system’s attacks on my large intestine. Though I find it frustrating how simplistically _The Evil Gene_ represents the influence of singular gene on a fantastically complex organ, the underlying theme of how much control do we have over our bodies (and specifically over our brains) and the question at its core is a legitimately thought provoking one. My brain and my consciousness are not separate entities, and therefore a defect in the hardware (the physical organ) will have repercussions for my consciousness, and those defects can be encoded in my DNA, and so in that sense those defects come to be integral part of what I consider “me”.


End file.
